%0 Journal Article
%T Recent Developments in Liposome-Based Veterinary Therapeutics
%A Hassan Sadozai
%A Dorsa Saeidi
%J ISRN Veterinary Science
%D 2013
%R 10.1155/2013/167521
%X Recent advances in nanomedicine have been studied in the veterinary field and have found a wide variety of applications. The past decade has witnessed a massive surge of research interest in liposomes for delivery of therapeutic substances in animals. Liposomes are nanosized phospholipid vesicles that can serve as delivery platforms for a wide range of substances. Liposomes are easily formulated, highly modifiable, and easily administered delivery platforms. They are biodegradable and nontoxic and have long in vivo circulation time. This review focuses on recent and ongoing research that may have relevance for veterinary medicine. By examining the recent developments in liposome-based therapeutics in animal cancers, vaccines, and analgesia, this review depicts the current significance and future directions of liposome-based delivery in veterinary medicine. 1. Introduction The veterinary pharmaceutical industry provides pharmacological agents for a wide variety of farm, companion, and laboratory animals. Typically the optimal products must be cost-effective, safe, easily administered [1], demonstrate in vivo efficacy, be nontoxic, and display favourable pharmacokinetics [2]. The final factor is the most salient as 90% of potential therapeutic agents have low bioavailability and poor pharmacokinetics [2]. In order to provide better therapeutic efficacy, the pharmacological agents can be incorporated into novel drug delivery systems [2, 3]. Recent advances in nanotechnology have allowed for the development of novel nanodrug delivery systems such as polymeric nanoparticles, magnetic nanoparticles, nanocrystals, nanoemulsions, and liposomes [2, 3]. These nanodrug delivery systems are known to enhance the therapeutic indices of the incorporated drugs through a number of ways. These delivery systems protect the entrapped agent from the internal body environment, improve the bioavailability and pharmacokinetics of the drug, are able to evade immune capture allowing for sustained-release of the drug over time [2, 3], and lower drug-associated toxicity by improving site-specific delivery [2]. In light of the possibilities offered by nanodrug delivery systems, their therapeutic applications have been investigated and this area has fostered considerable veterinary research interest. The term widely used to refer to this novel area of research, for both human and animal applications, is ¡°nanomedicine¡± [2¨C4]. Among the wide variety of existing drug-delivery systems, several liposome-based therapeutic agents in animals have been evaluated over the past decade and have
%U http://www.hindawi.com/journals/isrn.veterinary.science/2013/167521/